Life has a way....

Of preventing me from posting.  I mean I have VERY good intentions.  I actually have sat down on two separate occasions to post and voila..no post!!  I sit down and start typing and then I hear.."mom, can you..." and it is all over.  20 minutes later I have forgotten what on earth I was posting and have started on dinner.  And so it goes every time I have sat down to post in recent days.

So here I sit now with the same intentions.  I started to post, got distracted by one of the kids needing something and now I have my two little friends over that I watch on Wednesdays.  If this post actually gets posted I will be amazed.  I have had to put Ellie in time out 3 times already this morning and it is only 8:40.  3 tantrums later hopefully she will be able to come out and function with Jonah in the house.  They have days when they do soooo well.  And then there are the other days.  I am thinking that today might be one of those "other days" since as soon as she saw Jonah sitting on what she terms "her bench" it was all over.  I don't know if she hit him or not but he was crying and off to her room she went.  I am thinking that at this rate maybe she should just stay there till she goes to school and things might flow a bit smoother.  But then again a 3 hour timeout might be a bit much even for me.

She is now out of time out and talking about her bench...hmmm.  

The first time she was put in time out was because she asked for a waffle for breakfast and then didn't eat it but wanted yogurt.  My policy is that you can absolutely have yogurt but you can waste food.  So you need to eat the waffle and then I will get you yogurt.  She proceeded to throw a fit about not getting yogurt and refusing to eat the waffle.  I can't stand wasted food.  I  feel like there are kids everywhere without food and you are wasting the food you were given. It just should not be happening.  A crust on the pizza is ok, or a little crust from a sandwich is ok but an entire peanut butter covered waffle???  Too much...so she is now back downstairs from picking up her books and she is whining again about yogurt.  After carefully explaing that she still will not be getting yogurt unless she eats her waffle for the 3rd time, I think she has given up and is moving on.  For the time being that is...

We are in the process of applying for medicaid for Ellie.  There is a program that a friend of ours mentioned called the medicaid waiver program.  She thought Ellie might qualify and gave me the info a while ago.  I finally got phone call back and was originally told she didn't qualify. 3 days later I received a call saying after checking some things out she thought Ellie did indeed qualify and we made an appointment for someone to come out an do an assessment on Ellie. The assessment happened last week some time and I got a call from them saying she received a LOC (level of care).  Now it is up to me to call and get the financial part of medicaid rolling. Her LOC was for a year which means she gets evaluated every year to see if she qualifies.  I feel confident that in a year she probably won't qualify.  But I am going to take advantage of every service I can to get Ellie the necessary services to progress as much as possible.  Now we are dealing with the medicaid office.  What I am finding out is that dealing with medicaid is definitely not for the faint of heart.  I called yesterday to start this process and the first lady I talked to had NO IDEA what on earth I was talking about.  She of course transferred me to yet another woman who had NO IDEA what I was talking about.  The natural choice would then be to transfer me to yet another person who had NO IDEA what I was talking about.  After 15 minutes of being on the phone with people who obviously had no idea about the medicaid waiver program but worked for medicaid, I was about to pull my hair out!  Then finally the 4th person knew what I was talking about..thankfully!  So now I need to go in to the office in person and pick up an application.  I am going to try to do that this afternoon.  Just from my 15 minutes of experience with the office, I am confident that I am going to be in for a long process. I will definitely keep you all posted as a go along.  I hope this isn't an indication of the future because if it is this complicated and I make it to 69 or 75 or whatever age it is when I can actually use medicare services, I will be doomed.  Maybe Medicare will be radically different than Medicaid!!

So here are a few recent pics of the girls from when my mom visited last week.  We had a good visit and the girls have missed grammy since she flew back to Maine.  I have a lot of Ellie since she is one of the only ones who wants to get her picture taken.  Ainsley doesn't like it and Mackenzie doesn't mind but often is at school when I think to get the camera out.

We are looking forward to going to St. Louis over spring break.  The girls are so excited!  Jeff has a business trip and we are joining him for it.  The hotel has a pool and they are really looking forward to swimming.  St. Louis apparently has lots of free things to do so we will partake in as many of those things as possible.  They have a free children's museum, zoo and multiple other attractions.  The only one that I think we may need to pay for is to go up the arch.  But of course we can't pass that up!

Ainsley experimenting with the camera

Ellie

Ellie hanging out in the laundry basket

Reaching for the camera!

Ellie and Ainsley at the computer

Mom and Mackenzie making pizza

Making pizza take 2

Ellie

Mackenzie eating pepperoni

Mackenzie a mess after helping with the pizza

I love my new kitchen paint color...a much grayer and softer blue. I just got new kitchen curtains to go with the new paint color. They are a chocolate brown suede and look great. We also got new darker wood blinds for the windows and love those too. The next purchase I think will be the countertop. We are still not certain as to when we will do this but I can't wait to have it done! We dream of stainless steel appliances but that will probably be a long time in the future. I will keep you posted if anything new pops in to our kitchen:)

My new kitchen curtains..chocolate brown suede and I love 'em

More new paint color

Spring!

The last few days here in NKY have been pretty amazing and I am looking forward to spring!  A time when we can get outside more and see the neighbors and just enjoy the beautiful weather. Grilling out on the grill will also be a highlight since that frees me up to actually having to prepare dinner:)  Ellie has been having an awful time with accidents.  She has barely had any since getting potty trained over a year ago and now accidents left and right it seems. I can't figure out what is causing them.  Jeff thinks it is her fear of falling in the potty but that doesn't make a lot of sense unless she had some recent bad experience.  I am trying to figure out whether to bring her in to the doctor or not since it seems pretty sudden.  Maybe she has a UTI in which case I would want to get it treated.  And she is still having lots of tantrums.  I have been consistent with her but that doesn't seem to be helping.  I haven't heard back from the social worker at the International Adoption Center so I guess I need to call her again.  Why does it seem I am either calling a doctor, trying to connect with a doctor or at the doctor???

Mackenzie and Ainsley have been enjoying the beautiful weather and are happy for spring.  I haven't taken any new pictures so sorry!  I picked my mom up last night from the Dayton, OH airport.  She is here for a week so we are looking forward to spending time with Grammy Moody.  Enjoy the first day of Spring!!

You can only wish you were here..

So yesterday we experienced our first really warm day of the spring season here in KY. It was sunny and 74 degrees. I am loving it!!! So I bet you are all jealous unless of course you live in Florida. In which case I am jealous of you..but only in the winter:) Today is overcast and looks like it could rain soon but it is still warm in the high 60's. I love the spring in KY. Last year we didn't get much spring as it moved from 40's to 80's it seems. While that might be a slight over exaggeration, it went from cold to hot quickly. We didn't get much of the 60's. This week Mackenzie had her Student of the Month recognition at the monthly PTA meeting. The plan was for all of us to go but Ainsley came home from school not feeling well and had a fever so it ended up that only Jeff was able to go with her. She was a little nervous beforehand but did fine once she was there. She walked up with her friend Taylor and all went well. I will post a few pics of the event but none of them came out that great.
Other than that we have had a pretty low key week. The girls had Awana on Wednesday night and I spent the time while they were at Awana looking for brown valance curtains for our kitchen. I was unable to find any that I liked and so we are still curtainless. I have looked at all the stores I can think of so I think maybe it is now time to venture online.
We had the girls spring festival at school yesterday afternoon. It is the major PTA fundraiser and it looked to be a great success. They had a ton of silent auction baskets. I of course did not win the one I bid on but that's ok. I think every class did a basket with donated items based on a theme given to them by the PTA. It as a great idea and the girls had fun playing the games, jumping in the bounce house and wining prizes. I volunteered my time from 3-5 and had a good time helping out with doling out bags of popcorn. I even learned how to make it with the fancy popcorn stand. Pretty cool I say:) I unfortunately didn't get any pictures of me at the popcorn stand so sadly you will all have to use your imaginations:)
I have been reading a parenting book this week to try to help me get a handle on Ellie's tantrums and I also have a call in to the Social Worker at the International Adoption Center. Hopefully between those two things, I will get a better idea of how to best work with Ellie to minimize her tantrums.

Here is a random picture of Ellie this past week

Ainsley and Ellie with an entire strawberry in their mouth

why this is cool...I am not sure but they sure thought it was:)

Mackenzie waiting to receive her award for student of the month

Mackenzie and her friend Taylor who is right in front of her..

Fun times

So Mackenzie ended up going to school on Thurs even though she still said she had a headache because she wanted to go on their field trip. All of the second grade classes went to the children's theatre to see High School Musical 2. She had already seen it with me but of course going again is always fun especially if it is during school! She has still been complaining of a headache and I ended taking her in to school late on Friday because of it. I think she is just dehydrated so I pushed the fluids and sent her in to school. She was none too happy about this though and I am pretty sure the Vice Principal wondered if I was the meanest mom on earth. I just might be but I didn't want her to miss more school and she was ok when she got home and was able to go to Drama. Apparently her drama teacher gave her several compliments which made her day! She was so excited so things are looking up in the drama department. Her big performance is May 8th and tickets go on sale tomorrow. They are performing Suessical Jr and I have told her teacher about it. There are two day performances that are open to area schools and I thought it would cool if Mackenzie's class could go. The tickets are free so the schools just have to pay for transportation to the Carnegie. We shall see if we can work it out o or not but it is pretty fun. The week before sounds like a crazy schedule as they have practices for the performance Monday-Thursday night from 4-8 pm. That's going to be tricky for us since Mackenzie barely gets out of school that early. I think I might have to get her dismissed early every day. And then the day of the performance she has 4 of them. There's a 10 am, a noon, a 6 pm and 8 pm. Wow! But she really seems to be enjoying it so I am glad that I got her involved.

So hopefully we are all on the mend and no more sickness for a while. We are having a Wii party tonight and Ainsley has a friend's birthday party to go to today. I am taking her out soon to look for a present and pick up a few things for the party tonight. I may take her to Starbucks and get her a hot chocolate. She loves their frappuccino too so maybe we can split one of those:)

Home today

Mackenzie ended up staying home all day. I thought about taking her in for a half day but she wanted to stay home so I let her. I had her do some work on math facts and work on some Awana homework too. She is working on learning the books of the Old Testament. I don't remember learning them myself. It seems I have just always known them. But it is pretty funny to listen to her say some of them. Even though they give a phonetic pronunciation on the side of each of the book names she still managed to make me laugh. I should record her but then that might end up embarrassing her so I guess I shouldn't:) Then she and I played tanks on Wii play. We love that game but she is much better than me because I don't often find time to play:) She was pretty gracious though and didn't taunt me too much:) I had a dentist appt at 2 so she went with me to that and I got 2 fillings. Yuck! I got my mouth numbed at 2 and it is 5:15 and it is still numb. Jeff and I are supposed to eat out tonight at our regular date night with Ellie. Hopefully I can feel my mouth by then or I could do some serious damage. The girls have Awana tonight and when Jeff is in town we usually do a "Date Night with Ellie." It used to be our date night before we brought Ellie home but we decided Ellie wasn't ready for Awana (or they weren't ready for her that is..:) So we have changed it to date night with Ellie night. TGI Fridays for dinner because we have a BOGO coupon and gift cards so it's free!! And then on to Home Depot. Could it get any better than that??:) Jeff is going to try to haggle them down on the cost of a new counter top. It should be fun. Hopefully he can get the price down!

We almost dodged a bullet

But not really...Mackenzie got strep yesterday. Or at least I took her to the doctor yesterday. She has been complaining of a headache for 3 days or so and I figured I ought to have her checked out. Sure enough, it was strep. So I stayed home with her yesterday and will send her back today around lunch time, since that will be 24 hours from her first dose. We had a good but busy weekend this past weekend. We were out late Friday at our friend's house but apparently not nearly as late as some! We came home around 10:30 or so but some of our friends stayed till 3:30. I contemplate why anyone in their right mind can possibly want to be up till 3:30. It perplexes Jeff and I who are not late owls. I can do 11 and even midnight if I HAVE to but later than that and I just miss any kind of fun that would be. That probably explains why I go to bed early and get up early:)
On Saturday I had to work for a few hours in the morning and Mackenzie had practice for the Family Worship Service this Sunday at church. She is helping lead worship with some of the other kids on the stage. I think she will enjoy this as she has been asking to be more involved on stage. In the evening I took Mackenzie and Ainsley to see High School Musical 2 on stage at the Children's Theatre. It was very well done and they loved it of course! I even splurged this time and bought them cotton candy. In addition to why people stay up late, cotton candy perplexes me. I don't think I have ever liked it. I tried it again and am still confused. It just doesn't taste that good to me but the girls seem to love it. I can think of MANY fair kinds of foods that I love. dough boys, pretzels, caramel apples, and the list goes on but cotton candy has never been one of them. But they got to choose so cotton candy it was...
I had a purse party at a friend's house on Sunday and I took the two older girls, while Ellie was napping, over with me since it was at a neighbor's house. They had lots of fun and I got a free purse so it was great! Since then we have just been busy with school and repainting the kitchen. I will post some pictures once it is finally done!

So far...So good

Well we have managed the last few days with daddy being gone and I think we are all healthy now. Of course I haven't yet gotten Ellie up so that may not be the case but I am hopeful! We have a busy weekend with a party celebration tonight with friends MUCH older than us...he turned 43:) That should be a of fun as we love hanging out with friends. Tomorrow, barring snow, Jeff has flag football and Mackenzie has practice at church for our family worship and I think I will try to get a few hours of work in while she practices. That means finding something to entertain the two younger ones in the basement. Hopefully I will up to the challenge. The highlight of the weekend for the two older girls will be tickets to see High School Musical on stage at the Children's Theatre. I will be taking them to this while Jeff will be hanging out with Ellie at home. I am also hopeful that Jeff might have time to paint the kitchen this weekend. I will take some before and after shots to show you the results! We are doing some work in the kitchen as money allows or sales allow that is....we are going to get new Corian countertop but only when they go on sale. Jeff is going to attempt to put in a stone backsplash also. Once it is completely done it will look pretty cool I think. But it will probably come in stages so we shall see how long it takes!

Recovery

So after Ellie's party I started to feel sick! Originally I thought it was just allergies but started in with a fever so since Jeff had Monday off for President's Day I took myself off to the doctor. Of course I had strep throat and felt pretty awful. I did elect to get the shot though and started to feel better by Monday night which was good. We had a day and a half of decent health and then Ainsley proceeds to throw up just 20 minutes before I was going to cart her off to school! I guess that was fortunate for all of us because I called and made her an appt and she had strep too! Fortunately or Unfortunately, depending on whose perspective you ask, Jeff was out of town. Ainsley threw up on her way to the doctor and on her way back. Let's just say I didn't prepare very well. All I had in the car was an empty twizzler bag which didn't manage as well as I had hoped and Ellie's backpack. Let's just say that neither fared very well and I cleaned out the car today really well! But I felt really badly for Ainsley! Poor sick girl:( However after several more vomiting sessions and keeping down three doses of Amoxicillin, we are good. She had felt much better this afternoon and will definitely be up for school tomorrow, barring anything else. So far no one else is sick so maybe it will just be the two of us. We have quite a bit planned for this weekend so if someone need to get sick they are just going to have to wait!! Here are a few pics of Mackenzie with Ellie dress up that she got for her birthday.

Happy Birthday, Elliana!

I can't believe we have celebrated two birthdays with Ellie since she has come to be a part of our family. Ellie's birthday falls on Valentine's Day and this year she actually had a party to attend on her birthday and it wasn't her own! Her friend Aly turned 4 and we celebrated her birthday with her. We had a lot of fun playing with the other little girls and they all seemed to have lots of fun doing their arts and crafts and running around. Of course Ellie took the longest eating and I ended through her cupcake away because she was taking SOOOO long but she didn't seem to mind. Aly is also adopted from China as is one of her older sisters. Her parents had sent their photos and videos taken while in China adopting her sister away to someone who creates adoption videos. So while we were there, we watched the adoption video and it really was amazing the beautiful result. Maybe one of these days I will put our stuff together and look into having a video made. It would be an amazing keepsake for all of us I think.
Then on Sunday, the day after her actual birthday we celebrated Ellie's birthday with a small group of her friends. All of the ones that were able to make it are from our Asian playgroup and she had fun. We did some arts and crafts, played in the basement, had cake and ice cream and of course opened a few gifts! It was a good time had by all I think and here are some pictures of the big event.

Mackenzie's Birthday

Well I have successfully downloaded pictures from Mackenzie's birthday party! I think we all had lots of fun, Jeff and I included. We played the Wii a lot and ate pizza and cake and ice cream so really what's not to love? She had 5 girls overnight and only one ended up not staying the whole night! They all seemed to have fun and I managed to get them into bed pretty early considering. They were all out by 11 at the latest and woke up in the morning before I got up! I think some of the girls thought it was more fun to watch Jeff and I play the Wii than it was to actually play themselves but then they go into playing against us to see who could win! Needless to say I am not that good..:)
Here are some pictures from the big event!

Wii Fit

I am convinced that the best ending to a somewhat rough day is to watch your husband do yoga on the Wii fit. If laughter is good for the soul than watching Jeff doing yoga is definitely good for my soul:) We just purchased the Wii fit. We have been looking for it everywhere for what feels like forever and we finally found it at Toys R Us. I am really excited because we gave up our YMCA memberships to help save money monthly and we though the Wii fit might be a fun way to help us stay in shape. I am convinced that laughing also builds up your abdominal muscles too so this is a win win situation!!

After reading one of my friend's blog today I realized that often what I post glosses over the many hard things I experience every single day in parenting my children. I try to parent well but there are many days that I am just not successful. Especially when it comes to parenting a child with special needs. Knowing how to meet Ellie's everyday needs can be daunting and overwhelming and sometimes just downright frustrating. But I don't post those things because I don't want to always highlight the difficult things and focus on those. Hopefully I can keep it real without dwelling on the difficult challenges of each day that seem to arise. Not that Ellie hasn't made a lot of progress because she has but there are so many things that pop up day to day that can be daunting. Knowing which specific issue to work on in any given day can be overwhelming. Take for instance our Sunday morning experience. We got to church and I needed to be in the Children's area for a little bit to help find the sign in sheets. Ellie followed me in but I took her back out and shut the door so that Jeff could watch her. She proceeded to thrash against the door and throw herself to the floor. Jeff picked her up but when she is throwing a fit she makes her body so rigid and arches her back so much that she is difficult to hold. So he tried to set her down in a safe place. But we meet at a school and all the floors are hard. She managed to throw like a 15 minute fit and wouldn't let him comfort her. When I came out, she wanted me but she had to stop fussing for Jeff and that made her even more angry. I walked away and she must have hit her nose on the floor because when Jeff turned around she had a bloody nose. I had to spend 5-10 minutes cleaning up her bloody nose from her 20 minute temper tantrum and missed worship. And we still had to idea what set off the fit and how to help her deal with emotions. An ongoing struggle that seems to occur in cycles. We are by far perfect but fortunately we have a perfect Heavenly Father who loves us and helps see us through every day. We aren't helpless and hopeless but rest knowing that He knows exactly what we are going through and will give us wisdom to get through the day to day stuff.

Awana

Mackenzie and Ainsley got dressed up for Awana for crazy hair night. I wanted to take pictures of both of them but Ainsley didn't want any taken of her. I did get some of Mackenzie as I did her hair like Pippi Longstocking. I thought it looked pretty cute and she won for her class this year so she thought that was fun. We have been pretty busy in the last few weeks and I can't believe I didn't post more! The girls had all of last off due to weather here in KY. We got about 5 inches of snow, topped with 1-2 inches of ice and then 4-5 more inches of snow. Lots of people in parts of KY are still without power and will be till mid February I have heard. I am so thankful that we didn't lose power! Compared to so many others who lost power and have had to manage without many things the last few weeks, we are sooo blessed!
We actually had a pretty fun week with the girls off school. We played outside a lot and went sliding in our backyard. Though Jeff doesn't like our backyard and wants to do landscaping, I keep telling him that it is perfect for sliding! The neighbors also use it too and the all seem to have lots of fun. So even though the first time I got out last week after speech Monday morning was Friday at 4 to take Mackenzie to Drama, it wasn't too bad! We had fun times together playing inside and outside.
Now we are onto a new week and getting back into the swing of things. Of course the kids have today off too because of more snow. It doesn't seem to messy out there though and I will probably go grocery shopping later. We did get probably 2-3 more inches of snow yesterday afternoon and evening but it wasn't too bad, at least that I could see. Roads were a little slick but I guess all the snow we have is supposed to melt by Saturday. Mind boggling if you ask me!
So we are hanging out this morning watching Spiderwick Chronicles.
Ellie had a speech evaluation for Apraxia Monday at Children's Hospital. It went well and she did well. I think the therapist is making the recommendation that she has apraxia in her report that will go to the doctor. We will see what we decide, if anything to do with the information. I was hoping to get more help for services so that we don't have to pay as much our of pocket but I am not sure how many hoops we will have to jump through to get funding or coverage. But she is continuing to make improvements in her speech so that is encouraging. Our regular therapist, whom we saw on Tuesday, gave me lots of things to work on with Ellie in the next few months at home too. So we have some work cut out for us!
I will post some weather pictures and some recent pictures of the girls. Ellie LOVES having her picture taken. Ainsley however DOES NOT. So if you see more of one than the other that's just because capturing Ainsley on film can be difficult.










I also played my first game of scrabble with Mackenzie.  She did a great job and actually beat me.  I need to work on bigger words next time.  I took a picture of the scrabble board for her to show her big win!  I also have a few pictures of my new hair cut and highlights.  Not sure how well you can see them but I will post them anyway.  The last pictures will be of Chinese New Year that we celebrated with our local FCC group in NKY.  I didn't get too many pictures there but I did try to get a picture of each girl.  I didn't get any of them all together which is a bit of a bummer but sometimes that happens:)